Hayagriva das
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Question: Sādhana of uttamā-bhakti leads to bhāva and prema. If sādhana-bhakti has as its taṭastha lakṣaṇa the total absence of the desire to enjoy, what happens in the anartha-nivṛtti stage when there are no saṃskāras left to enjoy?
Answer: The very word sādhana means “a means to achieve a goal”. At the sādhana stage, one is not at the level of anyābhilāṣitā śūnyam and ānukūlyena kṛṣṇānu-śīlanaṁ, but one has the desire or resolve to achieve it. Otherwise, as you rightly wrote, there will be no sādhana–bhakti.
Pāṇiṇi has a sūtra—tad adhite tad veda (4.2.29). It means that a student as well as one who has studied, both are called “knowers of the subject”—e.g., one who studies vyākaraṇa as well as one who knows it, both are called vaiyakaraṇa. So, one who performs sādhana for uttamā-bhakti is also doing uttamā-bhakti, albeit at the sādhana level. That is why Rūpa Gosvāmī makes three divisions of uttamā-bhakti—sādhana, bhāva, and prema. In other words, the practice that leads to the perfection stage of uttamā-bhakti is also called uttamā-bhakti but at the sādhana stage. For example, in modern times, a person studying music, dance, or painting is called a musician, dancer, or a painter respectively.
So at the sādhana stage, one has the resolve to be anyābhilaṣitā śūnyam but has not achieved it yet. So that is where anartha–nivṛtti fits in.
Question: If in sadhana-bhakti one is allowed to have the desire to enjoy independently of Kṛṣṇa, what place does anyābhilāṣitā śūnyam have? Maintenance of body and bhakti coexist. Can the desire to enjoy and the desire to please Kṛṣṇa coexist?
Answer: It is not that one is allowed to enjoy, or one is allowed to have desire to enjoy. One does not desire to enjoy but one is not completely free from attachments. A practicing musician desires to be a perfect musician but is not perfect yet. Thus he will falter in his singing. This does not mean that he is desiring to falter.
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